Graf Zeppelin II Airship (1937) and Maybach DS8 Zeppelin Cabriolet Spohn Streamliner (1934)
Firstly I would like to acknowledge the distress caused by the deatha nad destruction caused to the many millions of people under the Nazi fascist regime in Germany prior to, and during WW II. In particular the ongoing pain caused by symbols used by the regime, including the 'Swastika', or four-legged cross. The depiction of the Swastika on the sail planes of the Zeppelin model is as a depiction of an historical artifact, in the context of it's place in history. No offense is intended in its use.
Please note the text regarding the placement of the Swastika on the Zeppelin airships during the 1930s, below.
A Zeppelin is a type of rigid airship named after the German Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin who pioneered rigid airship development at the beginning of the 20th century. Zeppelin's ideas were first formulated in 1874 and developed in detail in 1893. They were patented in Germany in 1895 and in the United States in 1899. After the outstanding success of the Zeppelin design, the word zeppelin came to be commonly used to refer to all rigid airships. Zeppelins were first flown commercially in 1910 by Deutsche Luftschiffahrts-AG (DELAG), the world's first airline in revenue service. By mid-1914, DELAG had carried over 10,000 fare-paying passengers on over 1,500 flights. During World War I the German military made extensive use of Zeppelins as bombers and scouts, killing over 500 people in bombing raids in Britain.
The defeat of Germany in 1918 temporarily halted the airship business. Although DELAG established a scheduled daily service between Berlin, Munich, and Friedrichshafen in 1919, the airships built for this service eventually had to be surrendered under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, which also prohibited Germany from building large airships. An exception was made allowing the construction of one airship for the US Navy, which saved the company from extinction. In 1926 the restrictions on airship construction were lifted and with the aid of donations from the public work was started on the construction of LZ 127 Graf Zeppelin. This revived the company' fortunes, and during the 1930s when the airships Graf Zeppelin and the larger LZ 129 Hindenburg operated regular transatlantic flights from Germany to North America and Brazil. The Art Deco spire of the Empire State Building was originally, if impractically, designed to serve as a mooring mast for Zeppelins and other airships. The Hindenburg disaster in 1937, along with political and economic issues, hastened the demise of the Zeppelins.
The principal feature of Zeppelin's design was a fabric-covered rigid metal framework made up from transverse rings and longitudinal girders containing a number of individual gasbags. The advantage of this design was that the aircraft could be much larger than non-rigid airships, which relied on a slight overpressure within the single pressure envelope to maintain their shape. The framework of most Zeppelins was made of duralumin. Early Zeppelins used rubberised cotton for the gasbags, but most later craft used goldbeater's skin, made from the intestines of cattle.
The first Zeppelins had long cylindrical hulls with tapered ends and complex multi-plane fins. During World War I, following the lead of their rivals Schütte-Lanz Luftschiffbau, the design changed to the more familiar streamlined shape with cruciform tail surfaces, as used by almost all later airships.
With the delivery of LZ 126, the Zeppelin company had reasserted its lead in rigid airship construction, but it was not yet quite back in business. In 1926 restrictions on airship construction were relaxed by the Locarno treaties, but acquiring the necessary funds for the next project proved a problem in the difficult economic situation of post-World-War-I Germany, and it took Eckener two years of lobbying and publicity work to secure the realization of LZ 127.
Another two years passed before 18 September 1928, when the new dirigible, christened Graf Zeppelin in honour of the Count, flew for the first time. With a total length of 236.6 metres (776 ft) and a volume of 105,000 m3, it was the largest dirigible to have been built at the time. Eckener's initial purpose was to use Graf Zeppelin for experimental and demonstration purposes to prepare the way for regular airship traveling, carrying passengers and mail to cover the costs. In October 1928 its first long-range voyage brought it to Lakehurst, the voyage taking 112 hours and setting a new endurance record for airships. Eckener and his crew, which included his son Hans, were once more welcomed enthusiastically, with confetti parades in New York and another invitation to the White House. Graf Zeppelin toured Germany and visited Italy, Palestine, and Spain. A second trip to the United States was aborted in France due to engine failure in May 1929.
The Graf Zeppelin (I):
In August 1929 Graf Zeppelin departed for another daring enterprise: a circumnavigation of the globe. The growing popularity of the "giant of the air" made it easy for Eckener to find sponsors. One of these was the American press tycoon William Randolph Hearst, who requested that the tour officially start in Lakehurst. As with the October 1928 flight to New York, Hearst had placed a reporter, Grace Marguerite Hay Drummond-Hay, on board: she therefore became the first woman to circumnavigate the globe by air. From there, Graf Zeppelin flew to Friedrichshafen, then Tokyo, Los Angeles, and back to Lakehurst, in 21 days 5 hours and 31 minutes. Including the initial and final trips between Friedrichshafen and Lakehurst and back, the dirigible had traveled 49,618 kilometres (30,831 mi).
In the following year, Graf Zeppelin undertook trips around Europe, and following a successful tour to Recife, Brazil in May 1930, it was decided to open the first regular transatlantic airship line. This line operated between Frankfurt and Recife, and was later extended to Rio de Janeiro, with a stop in Recife. Despite the beginning of the Great Depression and growing competition from fixed-wing aircraft, LZ 127 transported an increasing volume of passengers and mail across the ocean every year until 1936. The ship made another spectacular voyage in July 1931 when it made a seven- day research trip to the Arctic. This had already been a dream of Count von Zeppelin twenty years earlier, which could not be realized at the time due to the outbreak of war.
Eckener intended to follow the successful airship by another larger Zeppelin, designated LZ 128. This was to be powered by eight engines 232 m (761 ft) with a capacity of 199,980 m3 (7,062,100 cu ft). However the loss of the British passenger airship R101 on 5 October 1930 led the Zeppelin company to reconsider the safety of hydrogen-filled vessels, and the design was abandoned in favour of a new project, LZ 129. This was intended to be filled with inert helium.
The coming to power of the Nazi Party in 1933 had important consequences for Zeppelin Luftschiffbau. Zeppelins became a propaganda tool for the new regime: they would now display the Nazi swastika on their fins and occasionally tour Germany to play march music and propaganda speeches to the people. In 1934 Joseph Goebbels, the Minister of Propaganda, contributed two million reichsmarks towards the construction of LZ 129 and in 1935 Hermann Goering established a new airline directed by Ernst Lehmann, the Deutsche Zeppelin Reederei, as a subsidiary of Lufthansa to take over Zeppelin operations. Hugo Eckener was an outspoken anti-Nazi: complaints about the use of Zeppelins for propaganda purposes in 1936 led Goebbels to declare "Dr. Eckener has placed himself outside the pale of society. Henceforth his name is not to be mentioned in the newspapers and his photograph is not to be published".
On 4 March 1936 LZ 129 Hindenburg (named after former President of Germany Paul von Hindenburg) made its first flight. The Hindenburg was the largest airship ever built. It had been designed to use non-inflammable helium, but the only supplies of the gas were controlled by the United States, who refused to allow its export. So, in what proved to be a fatal decision, the Hindenburg was filled with flammable hydrogen. Apart from the propaganda missions, LZ 129 was used on the transatlantic service alongside Graf Zeppelin.
The Hindenburg on fire in 1937
On 6 May 1937, while landing in Lakehurst after a transatlantic flight, the tail of the ship caught fire, and within seconds, the Hindenburg burst into flames, killing 35 of the 97 people on board and one member of the ground crew. The cause of the fire has not been definitively determined. The investigation into the accident concluded that static electricity had ignited hydrogen which had leaked from the gasbags, although there were allegations of sabotage. 13 passengers and 22 crew, including Ernst Lehmann, were killed.
Despite the apparent danger, there remained a list of 400 people who still wanted to fly as Zeppelin passengers and had paid for the trip. Their money was refunded in 1940.
Graf Zeppelin was retired one month after the Hindenburg wreck and turned into a museum. The intended new flagship Zeppelin was completed in 1938 and, inflated with hydrogen, made some test flights (the first on 14 September), but never carried passengers. Another project, LZ 131, designed to be even larger than Hindenburg and Graf Zeppelin II, never progressed beyond the production of a few ring frames.
Graf Zeppelin II was assigned to the Luftwaffe and made about 30 test flights prior to the beginning of World War II. Most of those flights were carried out near the Polish border, first in the Sudeten mountains region of Silesia, then in the Baltic Sea region. During one such flight LZ 130 crossed the Polish border near the Hel Peninsula, where it was intercepted by a Polish Lublin R-XIII aircraft from Puck naval airbase and forced to leave Polish airspace. During this time, LZ 130 was used for electronic scouting missions, and was equipped with various measuring equipment. In August 1939, it made a flight near the coastline of Great Britain in an attempt to determine whether the 100-metre towers erected from Portsmouth to Scapa Flow were used for aircraft radio location. Photography, radio wave interception, magnetic and radio frequency analysis were unable to detect operational British Chain Home radar due to searching in the wrong frequency range. The frequencies searched were too high, an assumption based on the Germans' own radar systems. The mistaken conclusion was the British towers were not connected with radar operations, but were for naval radio communications.
After the beginning of the Second World War on 1 September, the Luftwaffe ordered LZ 127 and LZ 130 moved to a large Zeppelin hangar in Frankfurt, where the skeleton of LZ 131 was also located. In March 1940 Göering ordered the scrapping of the remaining airships, and on 6 May the Frankfurt hangars were demolished.
(Text taken from excerpts on Wikipedia)
There are some spectacular images of Zeppelins in various situations. Beyond the spectacular images captured at the crash of the Hindenburg, there are artistic impressions of the planned airship docking station at the top of the Empire State Building in New York, with airships docked there. Additionally, prior to the Hindenburg crash, the airship flew over Manhattan Island, Swastikas in clear view, right over the Empire State Building, prior to the crash in New Jersey an hour or so later.
Maybach DS8 Zeppelin Cabriolet Sphon Streamliner
Wilhelm Maybach, collaborator and friend of Gottlieb Daimler and the ingenious designer of the “Mercedes”, the first “proper” car, left Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft, where he had worked as Chief Engineer, in 1907. Together with his son, Karl, he started developing his own engines which in his opinion were excellently suited to driving the airships which had just begun cruising the skies. He approached Count Zeppelin, convinced him of the quality and performance of his engines and together they founded "Luftfahrzeug-Motorenbau GmbH“ in Bissingen near Stuttgart in 1909. Maybach’s son Karl was appointed Technical Director of this new aero engine company.
In 1912, the company – an early joint venture – moved to Friedrichshafen, to premises adjacent to Count Zeppelin’s airship factory. Until around 1920, Wilhelm Maybach intensively supported his son in his development work, bringing forth top-quality and highly progressive petrol and diesel engines as well as transmissions over several decades.
In 1921, Karl Maybach began producing his own cars in Friedrichshafen, engaging in the manufacture and assembly of frame, suspension, engine, transmission, radiator, firewall and major components. Maybach and his staff were less interested in bodywork design – this was the realm of specialist bodybuilders who tailored their designs to the customers’ wishes.
Close cooperation developed in the course of the years with the bodybuilding company of Herrmann Spohn in nearby Ravensburg; they even engaged in the manufacture of mini-series. Nevertheless, Spohn had to share the cake with other bodybuilders like Gläser in Dresden, Auer in Stuttgart and Neuss and Erdmann & Rossi in Berlin, to name but a few.
Thanks to their outstanding engineering, smooth-running engines and the quality appointments of the bodies, crafted by hand to the customers’ wishes, the exclusive Maybach cars very quickly established themselves in the world market – as limousines, voluminous Pullman versions, two-to-seven-seater coupés, cabriolets and roadsters. They were direct competitors of – and in the opinion of some contemporaries even superior to – the “Grand Mercedes”, Rolls-Royce, Bentley, Isotta-Fraschini and other luxury models.
The Maybach “Zeppelin” is one of the most famous models in the line-up of international luxury cars from the nineteen-thirties – a terrific twelve-cylinder car that was built in numerous versions between 1930 and 1937.
A contemporary test report enthused “... The Maybach Zeppelin models rank among the few cars in the international top class. They are highly luxurious, extremely lavish in their engineering and attainable only for a chosen few, not only on account of the small series in which these splendid cars are built.” (Allgemeine Automobilzeitung 1933, no. 35).
The Maybach Zeppelin DS 8, model year 1932, with chassis number 1387, and today owned by the Mercedes-Benz Museum, is one of these luxury limousines. Its completely restored bodywork, specially tailored by Messrs. Spohn in Ravensburg, is a four-door six-to-seven-seater cabriolet with long wheelbase and ample space for feeling at ease in comfortable leather chairs. Itself a feast for the eyes, the eight-litre V12 engine (number 25041) is still in a virtually “straight-from-the-factory” condition and in perfect working order. It develops its power of 200 hp at a maximum of 3200 revolutions per minute in superior style – the epitome of smoothness – and gives the car a top speed of 170 kilometres per hour.
(Text Courtesy of Daimler-Benz Corporation)
The Lego miniland-scale Graf Zeppelin II airship and the Maybach DS8 Zeppelin Cabriolet Spohn Streamliner have been created for Flickr LUGNuts 79th Build Challenge, - "LUGNuts goes Wingnuts", - featuring automotive vehicles named after, inspired by, or connected to aircraft.
Graf Zeppelin II Airship (1937) and Maybach DS8 Zeppelin Cabriolet Spohn Streamliner (1934)
Firstly I would like to acknowledge the distress caused by the deatha nad destruction caused to the many millions of people under the Nazi fascist regime in Germany prior to, and during WW II. In particular the ongoing pain caused by symbols used by the regime, including the 'Swastika', or four-legged cross. The depiction of the Swastika on the sail planes of the Zeppelin model is as a depiction of an historical artifact, in the context of it's place in history. No offense is intended in its use.
Please note the text regarding the placement of the Swastika on the Zeppelin airships during the 1930s, below.
A Zeppelin is a type of rigid airship named after the German Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin who pioneered rigid airship development at the beginning of the 20th century. Zeppelin's ideas were first formulated in 1874 and developed in detail in 1893. They were patented in Germany in 1895 and in the United States in 1899. After the outstanding success of the Zeppelin design, the word zeppelin came to be commonly used to refer to all rigid airships. Zeppelins were first flown commercially in 1910 by Deutsche Luftschiffahrts-AG (DELAG), the world's first airline in revenue service. By mid-1914, DELAG had carried over 10,000 fare-paying passengers on over 1,500 flights. During World War I the German military made extensive use of Zeppelins as bombers and scouts, killing over 500 people in bombing raids in Britain.
The defeat of Germany in 1918 temporarily halted the airship business. Although DELAG established a scheduled daily service between Berlin, Munich, and Friedrichshafen in 1919, the airships built for this service eventually had to be surrendered under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, which also prohibited Germany from building large airships. An exception was made allowing the construction of one airship for the US Navy, which saved the company from extinction. In 1926 the restrictions on airship construction were lifted and with the aid of donations from the public work was started on the construction of LZ 127 Graf Zeppelin. This revived the company' fortunes, and during the 1930s when the airships Graf Zeppelin and the larger LZ 129 Hindenburg operated regular transatlantic flights from Germany to North America and Brazil. The Art Deco spire of the Empire State Building was originally, if impractically, designed to serve as a mooring mast for Zeppelins and other airships. The Hindenburg disaster in 1937, along with political and economic issues, hastened the demise of the Zeppelins.
The principal feature of Zeppelin's design was a fabric-covered rigid metal framework made up from transverse rings and longitudinal girders containing a number of individual gasbags. The advantage of this design was that the aircraft could be much larger than non-rigid airships, which relied on a slight overpressure within the single pressure envelope to maintain their shape. The framework of most Zeppelins was made of duralumin. Early Zeppelins used rubberised cotton for the gasbags, but most later craft used goldbeater's skin, made from the intestines of cattle.
The first Zeppelins had long cylindrical hulls with tapered ends and complex multi-plane fins. During World War I, following the lead of their rivals Schütte-Lanz Luftschiffbau, the design changed to the more familiar streamlined shape with cruciform tail surfaces, as used by almost all later airships.
With the delivery of LZ 126, the Zeppelin company had reasserted its lead in rigid airship construction, but it was not yet quite back in business. In 1926 restrictions on airship construction were relaxed by the Locarno treaties, but acquiring the necessary funds for the next project proved a problem in the difficult economic situation of post-World-War-I Germany, and it took Eckener two years of lobbying and publicity work to secure the realization of LZ 127.
Another two years passed before 18 September 1928, when the new dirigible, christened Graf Zeppelin in honour of the Count, flew for the first time. With a total length of 236.6 metres (776 ft) and a volume of 105,000 m3, it was the largest dirigible to have been built at the time. Eckener's initial purpose was to use Graf Zeppelin for experimental and demonstration purposes to prepare the way for regular airship traveling, carrying passengers and mail to cover the costs. In October 1928 its first long-range voyage brought it to Lakehurst, the voyage taking 112 hours and setting a new endurance record for airships. Eckener and his crew, which included his son Hans, were once more welcomed enthusiastically, with confetti parades in New York and another invitation to the White House. Graf Zeppelin toured Germany and visited Italy, Palestine, and Spain. A second trip to the United States was aborted in France due to engine failure in May 1929.
The Graf Zeppelin (I):
In August 1929 Graf Zeppelin departed for another daring enterprise: a circumnavigation of the globe. The growing popularity of the "giant of the air" made it easy for Eckener to find sponsors. One of these was the American press tycoon William Randolph Hearst, who requested that the tour officially start in Lakehurst. As with the October 1928 flight to New York, Hearst had placed a reporter, Grace Marguerite Hay Drummond-Hay, on board: she therefore became the first woman to circumnavigate the globe by air. From there, Graf Zeppelin flew to Friedrichshafen, then Tokyo, Los Angeles, and back to Lakehurst, in 21 days 5 hours and 31 minutes. Including the initial and final trips between Friedrichshafen and Lakehurst and back, the dirigible had traveled 49,618 kilometres (30,831 mi).
In the following year, Graf Zeppelin undertook trips around Europe, and following a successful tour to Recife, Brazil in May 1930, it was decided to open the first regular transatlantic airship line. This line operated between Frankfurt and Recife, and was later extended to Rio de Janeiro, with a stop in Recife. Despite the beginning of the Great Depression and growing competition from fixed-wing aircraft, LZ 127 transported an increasing volume of passengers and mail across the ocean every year until 1936. The ship made another spectacular voyage in July 1931 when it made a seven- day research trip to the Arctic. This had already been a dream of Count von Zeppelin twenty years earlier, which could not be realized at the time due to the outbreak of war.
Eckener intended to follow the successful airship by another larger Zeppelin, designated LZ 128. This was to be powered by eight engines 232 m (761 ft) with a capacity of 199,980 m3 (7,062,100 cu ft). However the loss of the British passenger airship R101 on 5 October 1930 led the Zeppelin company to reconsider the safety of hydrogen-filled vessels, and the design was abandoned in favour of a new project, LZ 129. This was intended to be filled with inert helium.
The coming to power of the Nazi Party in 1933 had important consequences for Zeppelin Luftschiffbau. Zeppelins became a propaganda tool for the new regime: they would now display the Nazi swastika on their fins and occasionally tour Germany to play march music and propaganda speeches to the people. In 1934 Joseph Goebbels, the Minister of Propaganda, contributed two million reichsmarks towards the construction of LZ 129 and in 1935 Hermann Goering established a new airline directed by Ernst Lehmann, the Deutsche Zeppelin Reederei, as a subsidiary of Lufthansa to take over Zeppelin operations. Hugo Eckener was an outspoken anti-Nazi: complaints about the use of Zeppelins for propaganda purposes in 1936 led Goebbels to declare "Dr. Eckener has placed himself outside the pale of society. Henceforth his name is not to be mentioned in the newspapers and his photograph is not to be published".
On 4 March 1936 LZ 129 Hindenburg (named after former President of Germany Paul von Hindenburg) made its first flight. The Hindenburg was the largest airship ever built. It had been designed to use non-inflammable helium, but the only supplies of the gas were controlled by the United States, who refused to allow its export. So, in what proved to be a fatal decision, the Hindenburg was filled with flammable hydrogen. Apart from the propaganda missions, LZ 129 was used on the transatlantic service alongside Graf Zeppelin.
The Hindenburg on fire in 1937
On 6 May 1937, while landing in Lakehurst after a transatlantic flight, the tail of the ship caught fire, and within seconds, the Hindenburg burst into flames, killing 35 of the 97 people on board and one member of the ground crew. The cause of the fire has not been definitively determined. The investigation into the accident concluded that static electricity had ignited hydrogen which had leaked from the gasbags, although there were allegations of sabotage. 13 passengers and 22 crew, including Ernst Lehmann, were killed.
Despite the apparent danger, there remained a list of 400 people who still wanted to fly as Zeppelin passengers and had paid for the trip. Their money was refunded in 1940.
Graf Zeppelin was retired one month after the Hindenburg wreck and turned into a museum. The intended new flagship Zeppelin was completed in 1938 and, inflated with hydrogen, made some test flights (the first on 14 September), but never carried passengers. Another project, LZ 131, designed to be even larger than Hindenburg and Graf Zeppelin II, never progressed beyond the production of a few ring frames.
Graf Zeppelin II was assigned to the Luftwaffe and made about 30 test flights prior to the beginning of World War II. Most of those flights were carried out near the Polish border, first in the Sudeten mountains region of Silesia, then in the Baltic Sea region. During one such flight LZ 130 crossed the Polish border near the Hel Peninsula, where it was intercepted by a Polish Lublin R-XIII aircraft from Puck naval airbase and forced to leave Polish airspace. During this time, LZ 130 was used for electronic scouting missions, and was equipped with various measuring equipment. In August 1939, it made a flight near the coastline of Great Britain in an attempt to determine whether the 100-metre towers erected from Portsmouth to Scapa Flow were used for aircraft radio location. Photography, radio wave interception, magnetic and radio frequency analysis were unable to detect operational British Chain Home radar due to searching in the wrong frequency range. The frequencies searched were too high, an assumption based on the Germans' own radar systems. The mistaken conclusion was the British towers were not connected with radar operations, but were for naval radio communications.
After the beginning of the Second World War on 1 September, the Luftwaffe ordered LZ 127 and LZ 130 moved to a large Zeppelin hangar in Frankfurt, where the skeleton of LZ 131 was also located. In March 1940 Göering ordered the scrapping of the remaining airships, and on 6 May the Frankfurt hangars were demolished.
(Text taken from excerpts on Wikipedia)
There are some spectacular images of Zeppelins in various situations. Beyond the spectacular images captured at the crash of the Hindenburg, there are artistic impressions of the planned airship docking station at the top of the Empire State Building in New York, with airships docked there. Additionally, prior to the Hindenburg crash, the airship flew over Manhattan Island, Swastikas in clear view, right over the Empire State Building, prior to the crash in New Jersey an hour or so later.
Maybach DS8 Zeppelin Cabriolet Sphon Streamliner
Wilhelm Maybach, collaborator and friend of Gottlieb Daimler and the ingenious designer of the “Mercedes”, the first “proper” car, left Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft, where he had worked as Chief Engineer, in 1907. Together with his son, Karl, he started developing his own engines which in his opinion were excellently suited to driving the airships which had just begun cruising the skies. He approached Count Zeppelin, convinced him of the quality and performance of his engines and together they founded "Luftfahrzeug-Motorenbau GmbH“ in Bissingen near Stuttgart in 1909. Maybach’s son Karl was appointed Technical Director of this new aero engine company.
In 1912, the company – an early joint venture – moved to Friedrichshafen, to premises adjacent to Count Zeppelin’s airship factory. Until around 1920, Wilhelm Maybach intensively supported his son in his development work, bringing forth top-quality and highly progressive petrol and diesel engines as well as transmissions over several decades.
In 1921, Karl Maybach began producing his own cars in Friedrichshafen, engaging in the manufacture and assembly of frame, suspension, engine, transmission, radiator, firewall and major components. Maybach and his staff were less interested in bodywork design – this was the realm of specialist bodybuilders who tailored their designs to the customers’ wishes.
Close cooperation developed in the course of the years with the bodybuilding company of Herrmann Spohn in nearby Ravensburg; they even engaged in the manufacture of mini-series. Nevertheless, Spohn had to share the cake with other bodybuilders like Gläser in Dresden, Auer in Stuttgart and Neuss and Erdmann & Rossi in Berlin, to name but a few.
Thanks to their outstanding engineering, smooth-running engines and the quality appointments of the bodies, crafted by hand to the customers’ wishes, the exclusive Maybach cars very quickly established themselves in the world market – as limousines, voluminous Pullman versions, two-to-seven-seater coupés, cabriolets and roadsters. They were direct competitors of – and in the opinion of some contemporaries even superior to – the “Grand Mercedes”, Rolls-Royce, Bentley, Isotta-Fraschini and other luxury models.
The Maybach “Zeppelin” is one of the most famous models in the line-up of international luxury cars from the nineteen-thirties – a terrific twelve-cylinder car that was built in numerous versions between 1930 and 1937.
A contemporary test report enthused “... The Maybach Zeppelin models rank among the few cars in the international top class. They are highly luxurious, extremely lavish in their engineering and attainable only for a chosen few, not only on account of the small series in which these splendid cars are built.” (Allgemeine Automobilzeitung 1933, no. 35).
The Maybach Zeppelin DS 8, model year 1932, with chassis number 1387, and today owned by the Mercedes-Benz Museum, is one of these luxury limousines. Its completely restored bodywork, specially tailored by Messrs. Spohn in Ravensburg, is a four-door six-to-seven-seater cabriolet with long wheelbase and ample space for feeling at ease in comfortable leather chairs. Itself a feast for the eyes, the eight-litre V12 engine (number 25041) is still in a virtually “straight-from-the-factory” condition and in perfect working order. It develops its power of 200 hp at a maximum of 3200 revolutions per minute in superior style – the epitome of smoothness – and gives the car a top speed of 170 kilometres per hour.
(Text Courtesy of Daimler-Benz Corporation)
The Lego miniland-scale Graf Zeppelin II airship and the Maybach DS8 Zeppelin Cabriolet Spohn Streamliner have been created for Flickr LUGNuts 79th Build Challenge, - "LUGNuts goes Wingnuts", - featuring automotive vehicles named after, inspired by, or connected to aircraft.